1 Zoning for Difference: Rethinking Iris Young’s Ideal of City Life with the case of Prostitution Yen-Wen Peng Rutgers University Abstract This essay is a reflection on and supplement to Iris Young’s discussion about city life as a normative ideal. It starts with a review of the Western debate on communitarianism, which contextualizes the emergence of Young’s ideal of city life. While Young advocates the replacement of homogenous communities with diversified cities in order to assert the politics of difference, I argue that a city of difference is unavoidably built on the tolerance of different and even conflicting “homogenous communities.” Specifically, I point out that either requiring every community to accommodate prostitution or eradicating its legitimacy thoroughly from a city is against the principle of difference. As such, I conclude with a normative model of “zoning for difference,” which is built on the embodiment of participatory procedure and justified exclusion. Keywords: Zoning, Prostitution, Politics of difference, Exclusion, Participatory democracy, Antagonistic democracy, Social justice